Since the Burnaby Public Library had last updated their website, the city had grown in population and diversity, digital media went mainstream, and the range of library services had ballooned. With a new strategy and service model, they asked us to remake their web presence with a mandate to stay true to longtime patrons while welcoming community members with different needs.

Visit bpl.bc.ca

Highlights

Through some 50 interviews and 20 hours of observation at the four branches, we learned the true extent of the library’s offerings. Like most organizations, they do way more than you see at the surface.

Mega Menu

The challenge of creating easy pathways to so many services was compounded by the need to serve people of varying reading levels and abilities. We designed a 3-level system with spacious layouts and custom illustrations to soften the information density and warm the overall experience.

Screen recording GIF browsing the Burnaby Public Library website's menus. The cursor selects different headings, which open up sub-menus underneath filled with illustrated buttons.
BPL menus unfold from four starting points to dozens of options across some 25 categories
Screnshot of the Events menu on the BPL website, showing event listings under the sections "Happening Today," and "Happening soon."
The Events menu shows an upcoming schedule for the current and next few days.
Screenshot of BPL website with the "People & Help" menu open, which shows a list of illustrated buttons for library services. Below is an illustrated map of library locations and the contact information and hours of all 4 locations.
Some menus use custom layouts to solve specific problems, like showing locations and hours for all four branches.

Catalogue Integration

Like many libraries, BPL uses the Bibliocommons catalogue management system. Our integration enables staff to build collections of recommended books and to embed those collections on any page.

Screenshot of a portion of BPL's website, showing a collection of recommended book covers about artificial intelligence. The interface shows the titles of several other collections and prompts to browse.
The homepage Bibliocommons integration provides multiple collections of recommended books

Get on the List

The library runs a surprising number of events, some of which have capacity limits. Since provincial privacy law sets limits to how personal information about patrons must be managed, 3rd party event registration systems were unusable for them.

Our solution was to build a lightweight event registration system into Craft CMS that allows staff to set capacity limits and email all attendees, while patrons can self-manage cancellation or to bring a plus-one.

Screenshot of the admin backend of the BPL website for managing registration of an event. The interface shows a list of registration participants and settings to manage the status, capacity, and registration details of the event.
The event administrator’s view of registration tools

Libraries are civic magic. Anyone can walk in with a question, a project, or the need to get online. They come looking for a quiet space to read or just hang out, help with using audiobooks, a hand with social services, access to historical newspapers… and the list just goes on.

For every person and every question there’s someone who will stop what they’re doing and help out, for free. It’s a consumer society’s best kept secret that using a library is part of living well, and what we saw at BPL shows that libraries are part of our collective wellbeing.

Visit bpl.bc.ca